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Avonmouth and Shirehampton played a key role during World War One. When Lord Kitchener arrived to inspect Avonmouth鈥檚 modern port in 1914, he also noticed the acres of farm land nearby that could be used for munitions manufacture and as a remount depot.

During the war, the main way of transporting goods and supplies on land, apart from railways, was on horseback or mule-train. Due to growing demand; several remount depots were set up across the country to make sure the mules and horses were ready for the front line. Shirehampton was one of the largest with over 300,000 passing through the remount depot throughout the war.

鈥淢y Grandfather was a jockey and a manager at a stables, and he took a position at Shirehampton at the remount depot. He was given an honorary warrant officer鈥檚 rank in order for him to do his job properly,鈥� Paul Richards, from Bradley Stoke, explains. 鈥滺e must have been there until 1918 because my Father remembers him talking about horses coming back from Palestine.鈥�

The site stretched all across Shirehampton and Avonmouth with the land completely different to what it is 100 years later. Namely, the site used then as the veterinary hospital is now the land which houses Avonmouth Primary school, and it was this school in 2013 that were looking back at their local area, and what role it played in WW1.

Peter Insole is from Local Learning: 鈥淚n Avonmouth and Shirehampton a lot of people don鈥檛 even know this happened. We鈥檝e come into Avonmouth Primary to work with Year 6 to help them understand what were the implications for the existing community, how there was a new community brought in with the depot and also what were the implications for the people who gave up their horses for the war effort.鈥�

The pupils were taken around their local area and shown the remount depot in Shirehampton and Avonmouth. One pupil describes what they had been shown: 鈥淭here were huts for the men to sleep in, there were hundreds of paddocks and they kept a hundred horses in each. There was a veterinary hospital for 200 horses to stay in there at one time. A lot of the horses were coming from Canada, where because of the journey they were ill and they had lots of diseases.鈥�

The pupils were encouraged to use what they had learned to then perform a play. Celia Jenkins is their teacher: 鈥淚t鈥檚 incredible really because they have walked this site and it鈥檚 now completely different; there鈥檚 a Portway, there are motorways, there are bridges, there are factories; but yet they have been able to imagine themselves back in those days and empathise with those characters and see a viewpoint.鈥�

Location: Avonmouth Primary School, Avonmouth, Bristol BS11 9LG (former site of the veterinary hospital from the Remount Depot)

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